One thing that Americans are known for is their love of fast service. We want things now, and the faster the better.

This is true for our food, too. Americans already eat a lot of fast food. We order our hamburgers, fried chicken, or pizzas, and it’s made quickly. Many people use the drive-through and order their food without leaving their cars.

However, for some Americans, the wait at the drive-through is still too long. One recent survey found that about 70% of Americans won’t wait more than five minutes in a drive-through line.

How can restaurants make service even faster? Many large restaurant chains are now accepting electronic orders online (using the Internet) and with text-messaging (electronic messages sent from a cell phone). A large pizza restaurant chain, Pizza Hut, says that they get 30 electronic orders every minute!

~ Lucy

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16 Responses to “I Want My Food…Now!”

This that Lucy says, is a pity. The American People have many virtues however about food, in my view, they don’t know to care the quotidian pleasure to eat. In Spain, the young people, above all at weekend when they go out with their friends, they eat each day more fast food, due to the influence of globalization and big chains that offer burgers, chips, pizzas, as well as several busines of precooked food. However, in spite of this, the most of houses in Spain, still they keep cooking of Mediterranean diet, as healthy as tasty. For instance, I’m writing this text at 23:30 on monday and below I go to write the menu that today my family have eaten in my home:

*)For lunch:
– First a fresh salad
– Second rice with chicken, rabbit and vegetables.
– Dessert some slices of honeydew melon.
*)For dinner:
– First a fresh salad.
– Second a Spanish omelet (with potato and onion)
– As dessert some white grape.

For drink usualy I have a glass of red wine and my wife and ours sons have had fresh water.
Enjoy your meal, but don’t forget, the slower the better.

In my country-Vietnam, people do’nt like fast food so much. There are some fast service for food such as hamburgers, fried chicken, or pizzas but they don’t have to serve quickly and most of them aren’t cheap, especial for students like me :D.

I live in Hong Kong, where people also pursue speed, because all of us are soooo busy! But here we have more choices for fastfood, and some fastfood restaurants even offer healthy diets with lots of vegetables now. It is a good trend, and will be even better if we can eat slower. I don’t think swallowing a lunchbox in less than 10minutes (like what I did today) is good for the stomach~~

elcomandant, I heard that Spaniards have very long meals which take around 3 hours to finish, is that true? It must be very enjoyable. And I really think your diets are really healthy! I’ve been to Spain a few months ago, the tapas and wine were all so yummy!

Well, as Ari, I am also from an European family, and eating should yes be a ceremony, I think eating is more than just chewing and swallowing, it’s a moment of pleasure, but I don’t blame fast food at all, because people don’t have too much time to be sitting around with their families having a proper conversation and all that, the time is short and becoming even shorter nowadays, because of one’s job.

So if you don’t have any option left you should go with fast food, and unlike some people say fast food is not junk food, so I don’t think there is a harm in that.

Eating is a great pleasureand that’s why American people what want to achieve that as soon as they can but I think they shouldn’t make that fundamental miscalculation that every food is not healthy although it’s delicious. Anyway I personaly love fast food

Hi smallpig,
when we meet around a table to celebrate something, we normaly take more than one hour, althoug it can be more due to the reason of celebration.
When we eat at home, normaly we take around 30 minutes to one hour.
Bythe way, don’t forget, take your time for eating, it is worth.
Greetings.

Hi I am from Italy, perhaps the mother country of good eating and mediterranean diet.
I think that fast food service doesn’t necessarily imply fast food eating.
I enjoy italian and mediterranean diet and practice it, (few meats, many vegetables, fruit, fish) but sometimes I love to eat at MacDonalds.
Taking a well-balanced meal and enjoying it slowly is up to me.

But this topic is about the amount of time you have to wait to get your food, not the time you spend to eat it. When I go to the restaurant I like the food to be served in a reasonable amount of time. Once I had to wait 45 minutes to get my Cochinita Pibil. That’s a lot of time, specially when you are hungry!

It is a lovely conversation you are having there. We are trying to express our thoughts and feelings in English. Some of you have very good English – my congratulations! And you are very friendly to the others.

I don’t think that fast food might be the matter of argue. If you like it – enjoy it! If you don’t like it – you are free to choose something else.

I for one cannot remember the last time when I tried hamburger or cheeseburger, But we have a Chinese restaurant near our office and I am used to have lunch there. It is a little tricky to use these sticks instead of a fork and knife!

But let us remember that we eat to live, not live to eat. There are many different countries in the world and every country or nation has its own traditions and preferences in food.

Nothing to say about our way of eating here as it is so different than in all over the world. I can say that when I was working I have to dine nearly four in the afternoon as I was working from 8 a.m to 3 p.m., and ofcourse that was the principal meal along the day.
I use to get up about 6,30 a.m., take nothing to breaksfast until 10,30 a.m. that used to have some cofee or tea with toast, and nothing more until 3,30 p.m. or 4 p.m., which was to much time without food inside, and of course diner was nothing but fast. I takes a lot of time as we wanted to rest also, talking together and sometimes going to nap after diner.
But supper is another question here as we use to have it very late, later that all over the world as it is frecuent to see people having supper at 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. sitting at the restaurant’s tables or at home watching tv., and which it is worst …going to bed very, very late.
At the spanish’s costs you may see inmediately who is from out of the country and who is spaniard just for the hour they have their meals. 12 a.m. foreigner (german, french, english, north american, and so on) 2,30 p.m. or 3 p.m…..spaniard. But it is so funny to see people at the restaurant’s tables at 7 p.m. and hour that we are at the beach or going to a walk, or just getting up from the bed after a long nap.
Despite we are seeing these odd hours to have meals for so many years, we never have in mind to change our habits of having our meals late, talking and seing everything around us, and doing just the contrary that all other visitors, who I think have more healthy habits, but also more boring.
Spaniard’s old people don’t like fast food at all. We take our time for each meal and we do them at quite different hours from rest of the world. In the south or in summer we live outside and we do not find time just to go to bed at convenient hours in order to work propperly next day.

Here in Venezuela, we have our own fast food: Arepa, this is a kind of cake, made of corn and you can fill with anything like: jam, chesse, chicken, pork, avocato, etc. People eat arepa in the breakfast, lunch and dinner, even at 3:00 am after a nigth of the party.